Yarns From Queenstown

Over the easter break I hit up the Tour de Lakes in Queenstown. It was a 4 day tour with 6 stages and a prologue.

Prologue:
The prologue was a 5km time trial in Cromwell on the Friday. No TT bikes were allowed which worked to my advantage as I'm too poor to buy a TT bike. I felt pretty good in the TT even though there was a headwind and I finished 6th, 15 seconds behind the leader, David Rowlands (an unknown but very underrated rider!)

Stage One:
The following day comprised of two 80k stages. I rode aggressive from start to finish of stage one. I was in nearly every break and made every split. At one stage I was away solo and Gordy bridged across to me. I took a hard turn on the front and said, "come on Gordy let's go" and he replied, "shit, i am going!" Felt pretty stoked. But in the end, all this aggression proved pointless as the field didn't split until the final 10km. This happened after the field had split but come together just at the bottom of the KOM climb with 10km to go. Chris Nicholson rolled off the front just before the start of the climb. By the top of the climb he was joined by James Early and I was part of a 4 man chase group (including the yellow jersey and Gordy) followed by what was left of the rest of the bunch. In the end Crusty took the stage with Early taking second and Gordy just rolled me for 3rd. This put Crusty in yellow and polka dot.

Stage 2:
By the time the the afternoon stage started, the wind had picked up bigtime meaning our ride from five rivers to Manapouri was going to be predominantly cross wind. As soon as the stage started i felt cracked. I don't know what happened cos i felt fine at the end of stage one. But because of the wind I couldn't just rest up so I kept lapping just to get my share of shelter. After 30km I had fully hit the wall and dropped off losing 20mins to the bunch. A bit guttered but gotta say a big congrats to Zenevich who took the stage solo by being an aggressive little bastard.

Stage 3:
Stage 3 was a 20km TT but I just used it to spin the legs so I could rip shit up in the afternoon. Gordy smashed it into the headwind rolling Chris Nics by 1:20 taking yellow.

Stage 4:
Stage four was that afternoon from Te Anau back to five rivers. I could feel the form back so did a fair bit of work for Chris (as we'd agreed to go halves in any prize money and my G.C chances were out the window anyway) before we hit the KOM hill bout halfway through. I was on the front leading up to the hill and stayed on the front setting a hard pace till about 3 quarters when Chris shouted out for me to slow down as I not only split the field into small groups but dropped Chris in the process (yea that's right, T.A's climbing legs are back!). So I pulled off and Gordy attacked with Rowlands. Unfortunatley as I sat up to wait for Christ I went to change down into the little ring but lost my chain. I didn' have the momentum to get it back on so had to get off to do it. By this time most of the bunch had passed me but I got up and boosted it as fast as I could. Eventually a group of dropped riders formed and after about 15km we managed to chase down the chase group (as Gordy and Rowlands were still away). When we caught the chase group I could straight on the front and got everyone rolling to bring back the break. We had  a fir bit of crosswind which made it a smashfest but I gave it 110% and blew in the last km. We were still about 30 seconds off the break at the end but I felt smashed after averginh 48.7kmh for the stage.

Stage 5:
The final day included two stages approximately 45km long. The morning stage went from Queenstown to Glenorchy which had a few good rollers in it. In the end Darcy Norton won the stage after he was let roll because he wasn't a threat to G.C. I once again finished in the chase Group.

Stage 6:
Stage 6 went back along the smae road except that it finished up a 1.6km steep climb known as Moke Lake. I was pretty keen to get a decent result so decided this would be my stage. Early on I made it into a break of 6 but we were brought back because there was double points up for grabs on the primes so everyone was keen to keep the bunch together. So after the KOM climb I started havind a few dabs off the front but these were all covered straight away. On my 3rd attempt they let me roll and I put a bit of a gap between me and the bunch getting out to around 40 seconds. I could feel the fatigue from the earlier stages but I pushed on. Unfortunately I was caught by a few riders within the final km of the final climb so only finished 6th on the stage which was pretty disappointing. Gordy won the Tour with Chris pulling off a third.

Overall it was a pretty sick tour. Would love to do it again but hopefully will be overseas by this time next year. It was pretty sweet hangin with the backpackers at Hippo Lodge (who were keen to get me to knock back a few rum n cokes in the evenings) and as always there were a few shits n gigs during the weekend.

Chur